“My project offers a metaphorical immersion into the stomach of a kind of an unknown tentacular animal, in order to find out who we are. I would like for each spectator to feel him/herself becoming a tentacle of the project.”

The fictional film of Laure Prouvost for the French Pavilion takes the form of an initiatory journey, a joyous saga filmed over the course of a roadtrip through France, from the Parisian suburbs to the north of France, from the Palais du Facteur Cheval to the Mediterranean Sea, and finally to Venice.

“The film is the central element around which the piece is structured. It is in a way the head of my octopus, which means that the installation is alive because of the film, but not solely.”

“My installation is a place of life in the depths of our subconscious.”

“I like to question what we present and represent, who we are and where we go to, both personally and on the scale of humanity. There is also the idea of melting and mixing into more or less strong visions, which have more to do with sensations.” 

“Idiomatic expressions, once translated, become very strong images, such as I will tell you loads of salads! Maybe there was a time when salads were told in the fields? I’m as much interested in knowing their context as deconstructing it.”

Using video, drawing, tapestry, ceramics, glass, photography, performance, and above all, language, Laure Prouvost creates immersive installations which plunge the viewer into a state of personal and collective introspection.

“I had the idea of the octopus as a metaphor for the origins of our planet and, as human beings, for the development of our nervous systems. Its tentacles are key because they are the sensory extension of it.”

“A trip to our unconscious. With the help of our brains in our tentacles, we dig tunnels to the past and the future. Let’s follow the light.”  

“My grandmother in Roubaix forced me to bring a tapestry she made to Venice!”